Systems management often requires that a user navigate among a large number of computer-based managed items which are part of a systems management environment. The computer-based managed items can include computers, software systems, mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and/or any other items that can be managed by a systems manager. For ease of discussion, such computer-based managed items may be referred to herein simply as “managed items” or “items”. In many cases these managed items are part of complex structures and are often linked by complex relationships.
The systems manager may need to navigate among the managed items and/or to locate certain managed items in the system for a host of reasons. For example, the systems manager may simply need to evaluate the general performance of the system, or the systems manager may need to diagnose and/or repair one or more managed items. The systems manager may need to address the migration of new hardware and software into or out of the system. The systems manager may also need to locate a business system, such as an email service that is not working, or may need to make configuration changes and/or security changes to certain managed items. In any of these cases, the systems manager will typically need to locate the items requiring attention.
Navigating among and/or finding computer-based managed items in a systems management environment would not be a difficult task if the number of managed items was small. However, the task is often very difficult because the systems manager must navigate among a large numbers of managed items. For example, the systems manager may need to navigate among thousands of computers, millions of software systems, components, applications, and the like. The sheer quantity of managed items in the system can make it difficult to navigate among the items and/or to locate the items which require attention.
Systems management continues to grow more complex, in part due to computing environments that continue to become more complicated and involved. For example, companies are using a greater number of computers which are linked by increasingly complex relationships. The increasing prevalence of mobile computing devices such as laptop computers, mobile phones, and PDAs has further complicated the computing environment. Put simply, as the computing world grows more complicated and management operations become more ambitious, systems management becomes increasingly problematical. Unfortunately, the present techniques for navigating among computer-based managed items and/or finding managed items that require attention are often impractical, or at the least very inconvenient for the complex systems management environment.
One conventional technique for navigating among a large number of managed items is to use a “tree control” similar to that used for navigating among folders and files on most desktop computers. In this case, the large number of managed items is divided up into a hierarchy of groupings. One central challenge that systems managers face is that there are many reasonable ways to arrange the managed items into hierarchical groups, and if the systems manager does not understand the arrangement chosen by a software designer, it can be difficult to locate a managed item that is of interest to the systems manager.
Some other techniques support multiple simultaneous ways of arranging the managed items into “trees”, which is a concept referred to as “polyarchy”. A polyarchical arrangement makes it somewhat easier for the systems manger to find an item, but only if the systems manger understands and chooses one of the hierarchies that was implemented by the software designer. In some cases, the system allows an administrator to define the hierarchies to be used, but in any organization with several staff members the difficulty of understanding the hierarchies remains. Unfortunately, in many cases, even if the systems manger understands and chooses one of the hierarchies implemented by the software designer, there may be too many folders and too many items to practically navigate.
Another challenge faced by systems managers is how to select several managed items for further manipulation, when such items are located in separate navigational contexts. For example, conventional “multi-select” techniques, such as “control-click”, can be difficult to use since they require a high degree of articulation when using a mouse. This is especially true when navigating among millions of items. Still further, such multi-select techniques may not even be available if finding the managed items requires navigation through different data structures, as the separate navigational steps will normally “collapse” the context.
While systems management has become increasingly complex, the present techniques for navigating among managed items, for finding managed items which require attention, and for selecting managed items for further attention, have not kept pace.